HISTORICAL RECORD: FORMER SYDNEY FERRY M.V. KOOLEEN FEBRUARY 2003 HT 03/003 Historyworks PO Box 108 Mt Kuring-gai NSW 2080 Phone: (02) 9456 2191 Email: [email protected] Heritage Consultancy Services www.historyworks.com.au Purpose of report: This report has been commissioned by NSW Waterways Authority who require a record of the history and significance of the former Sydney ferry Kooleen, now in the possession of the Authority as a result of impounding of the vessel, prior to further action. Date: 27 February 2003 (updated 27 November 2006) Location of vessel: Waterways Authority berths, Rozelle Bay, Sydney. (Update: vessel now broken up.) Report prepared by: Tony Prescott, MA(Hons), Dip Ed, MPHA, FAPI Historyworks PO Box 108 Mt Kuring-gai NSW 2080 Phone: (02) 9456 2191 Email: [email protected] For clients: New South Wales Waterways Authority (now NSW Maritime Authority) Contents of report: Introduction Part A: Historical and physical evidence Part B: Significance Bibliography Appendices Note on measurements: In the historical section of this report, measurements are in the Imperial units used in the contemporary shipping registers and documentation, the vast quantity of this historical data being Imperial. Conversions to metric may be calculated as follows: Feet to metres, multiply by 0.3048 Horsepower to kilowatts, multiply by 0.746 Knots to kilometres per hour, multiply by 1.853 Register ton (100 cubic feet) to cubic metres, multiply by 2.83 Copyright © Historyworks 2003, 2006. Note: This report is the intellectual property of Historyworks which reserves the right to authorise or not authorise its use. HISTORYWORKS 1 INTRODUCTION The objective of this report is to record the history and significance of the former Sydney ferry Kooleen prior to its disposal. The report follows the general approach outlined in the NSW Heritage Office guideline, How to Prepare Archival Records of Heritage Items (1998). The major archival resource on the vessel, including plans, is publicly accessible within the Sydney Harbour Transport Board records held by NSW State Records Office and this material thus supplements this report. PART A: HISTORICAL AND PHYSICAL EVIDENCE History The Sydney ferryboat M.V. Kooleen was introduced to service on Sydney Harbour at a critical juncture in the long history of ferry services on the harbour. At the time the vessel was ordered from its builders (1953) the ferry services were undergoing rapid patronage decline after playing a major role serving the city for over 120 years. This decline was a result of several factors, including the spread of the city’s suburbs into the hinterland away from the harbour, thus diminishing the role of the ferries, the construction of a major bridge across the harbour (Sydney Harbour Bridge, 1932) and the growing use of motor cars for suburban transport after the second world war.1 These changes brought to an end the operations of the largest Sydney ferry operator, Sydney Ferries Ltd., which sold its operations, wharfage, depots and fleet to the New South Wales State Government in 1951. The government created the Sydney Harbour Transport Board to take over ownership of the ferries and contracted their operation to the Port Jackson and Manly Steamship Co. Ltd., which also continued to operate their own Manly ferry service under increasing financial difficulty until 1974. The Sydney Harbour Transport Board inherited an ageing fleet of large double- ended ferries, mostly of timber construction and half of them steam powered, and all bar one (Kareela, 1905) built in the 1910s. Except for the smaller diesel vessels, built for river services, the fleet was hopelessly oversized and obsolete for post-war needs. The Board thus set about finding ‘the most suitable type of ferry to replace existing units as they cease to be serviceable.’2 At the same time the Board ordered a number of diesel engines from Crossley Brothers of Manchester, UK, to re-engine the best of the existing vessels - six river ferries which had been refitted with 1 A.M. Prescott, Sydney Ferry Fleets. Adelaide, R.H. Parsons, 1984. 2 Sydney Harbour Transport Board, Annual Report 1951/52. HISTORYWORKS 2 Gardner diesels in the 1930s3, and three of the larger steamers.4 The Board appeared to be initially optimistic that patronage would grow and in 1952 was discussing a design with the NSW State Dockyard in Newcastle. This was to be a ferry with a capacity of about 800 passengers, the conceptual design for which is illustrated at Appendix D.5 Like its predecessors it was to be a double-ended, double-deck ferry but, interestingly, it took the progressive enclosure of passenger accommodation (which had been a trend since earlier in the century) on Sydney’s ferries to its ultimate extreme by having no outside passenger spaces whatsoever. (The design also closely resembled the Sydney showboat Kalang, though that vessel at least had open shelters on the main deck and an open sun deck for passengers.) In spite of its size, this design was a clear precursor to Kooleen which evolved to replace it when the Board realised that patronage was dwindling. Accordingly the Board decided that the proposed new design would be for about 300 passengers and deferred the matter until 1953 to allow further design work to be undertaken.6 In aiming for a vessel which was smaller in size than the existing ferries and economical to operate, the Board was not setting a new goal for Sydney’s ferries. After the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Sydney Ferries Ltd. experimented with smaller, fast ‘waterbuses’7, at 69 feet nearly the length of Kooleen, but these were too technologically sophisticated for their own good, their lightweight construction suffering from the vibration of the twin 8-cylinder 160 hp Gleniffer diesels powering them. A little smarter though less innovative were the small private ferry operators like Hegarty, Nicholsons and Rosman who used tried and true wooden designs, some examples of which have survived into the 21st century after several decades of hard service. The Board therefore had some lessons to draw on before commissioning a design by naval architect A.N. Swinfield and placing its order for Yard No. 58 from the State Dockyard in 1953.8 The Board explicitly stated that the ferry was a prototype, to be evaluated in service to assist further 3 Lady Ferguson, Lady Chelmsford, Lady Denman, Lady Edeline, Karingal, Karrabee. (Lady Scott retained its Gardner engine.) 4 Kanangra, Kosciusko, Kameruka. 5 State Records NSW (SRNSW): Sydney Harbour Transport Board (SHTB); Special Bundle CGS 13969, 13/8045, General Arrangement plan for double-deck ferry [August 1952]. 6 SRNSW: SHTB; CGS 13968, Minutes of Meetings of the Board, 24 November 1952. 7 Pelican, Swan, Crane (1934) 8 SRNSW: SHTB; loc. cit., 23 November 1953. HISTORYWORKS 3 design work. It was not the first of a class as stated in some sources.9 Commencement of construction was deferred until 1955 while issues concerning manning and choice of engine and seating were resolved.10 In 1954 the Dockyard drew attention to an increase in topside weight resulting from amended seating arrangements and suggested either increasing the beam (which would involve total redesign), using cement ballast in the bottom (which would increase fuel consumption and thus costs) or constructing the superstructure (hitherto to be steel) in aluminium. The last was the preferred choice of both the Dockyard and the Board.11 Construction finally commenced in 1955, the vessel to be named Karloo (following the ‘K’ nomenclature used by Sydney Ferries Ltd.) until it was found that there was already a ship of that name and so the name Kooleen was chosen.12 Kooleen was built in a cradle at State Dockyard and launched by craning into the water on 21 April 1956, the process being illustrated by the extract at Appendix E from Australuco News, November-December 1956.13 It cost the Board £96,000, £10,000 less than it cost the Dockyard to build it. Kooleen was a single-deck vessel with a double-ended steel hull and fully enclosed aluminium alloy superstructure topped by a double-ended wheelhouse amidships. It was powered by a Crossley diesel driving directly connected propeller shafts with a single screw at each end. At 74.5 feet in length, Kooleen was probably the smallest double-ended screw ferry built since S.S. Una of 1898, most Sydney ferries under 100 feet in length being single-ended because they did not have a problem turning at Circular Quay, the reason for the larger ferries being double-ended. Certainly Kooleen was tiny compared to its running mates which ranged from 104 feet (Karingal) to 149 feet (Kanangra) in length. Kooleen could carry 278 passengers compared to 500 or more for the Lady ferries. An interesting feature is that it was fitted with surplus upholstered reversible seating built for a part-cancelled order of R1 class tramcars being built for the Sydney tramways a couple of years earlier. Detailed specifications for Kooleen are given at Appendix A. Extracts from the builder’s drawings are at Appendix B and the original colour scheme is at Appendix C. Kooleen was trialed on Port Hunter on 4 October 1956 and, in conjunction with tank tests at Sydney University’s Engineering Faculty, it was found that the vessel tended to produce an excessive bow wave and ship water over the bows, resulting in modifications including the fitting of 9 SRNSW: SHTB; loc. cit., 26 February 1954, 26 March 1957. 10 SRNSW: SHTB; loc. cit., 23 November 1953, 25 January 1954, 23 August 1954. 11 SRNSW: SHTB; loc. cit., 25 October 1954. 12 SRNSW: SHTB; loc. cit., 22 August 1955, 5 December 1955, 27 February 1956.